Video games are a major genre of entertainment. There is a growing market for games, gaming leagues and news stories. In this regard, techniques have arisen to document and record the happenings and events. Methods to enable recording of video games into movies include the following:
1. A software module grabs shots of the screen, and sound data from a sound card, to save them as frames in a movie (see FIG. 1); or
2. A hardware capture device is hooked between a game console and a screen or a PC and a screen, and the hardware capture device places the stream into a PC or other device for recoding as a movie (see FIG. 2).
Of note, video games are typically played either on a personal computer or on a dedicated game console. The term “game device” may sometimes be used herein to refer either to a game console or a personal computer on which games are played. A game device is typically connected to a 2D screen. To record the games into movies, a recording module may grab shots of the screen and save them as frames in a movie. The recording module would also query the sound card driver iteratively to get data related to the currently played sound (see FIG. 1, showing game device 101, game 103, graphic engine 105, audio engine 107, video card 109, audio card 111, recoding module 113 and movie file 115).
In the case where the recording is performed on a separate computer or device that is not the game device, the cable output of the game device may be connected to a capture device which reroutes the frames into the computer. This computer captures the frames and the audio (e.g., several times a second) and saves the frames and audio data into a movie. The capture device could be installed as part of the computer, as a video capture card or be a separate device altogether. The computer is typically a personal computer but could also be a device with Internet Protocol Broadcasting capabilities (see FIG. 2, showing game device 201, monitor 203, capture device 205, computer 207, recoding module 209 and movie file 211).
Among those benefits and improvements that have been disclosed, other objects and advantages of this invention will become apparent from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying figures. The figures constitute a part of this specification and include illustrative embodiments of the present invention and illustrate various objects and features thereof.